Leadership, Actor-Network Theory, and Social Capital

A NEW MISSION FOR BUSINESS SCHOOLS:

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACTOR-NETWORK LEADERS

C. Clinton Sidle

Chester C. Warzynski

The idea that leaders work within social networks and are influenced by those networks is not new. Bass (1990) cites numerous studies examining various aspects of network contexts and leadership. As he puts it, “Leadership depends on interaction. Interaction depends on physical proximity, social and organizational propinquity, and networks of open channels of communication. And so, not surprisingly, the emergence and success of leadership depend on such physical and social arrangements. Such arrangements may also be possible substitutes for leadership” (p. 658). He goes on to note that networks are important both to transactional and transformational leaders. Leaders build and foster social networks with employees, peers, and customers. In turn networks enable leaders to get their work done, transact with customers, transfer knowledge, innovate, and create value.

The importance of social networks to leadership is emphasized in the McKinsey Leadership Research Project, “Leadership in the Context of Emerging Worlds: Illuminating the Blind Spot,” (Arthur et al, 2000). In this ongoing research project prominent thought leaders from academe and business share their insights on the challenges facing leaders. They note that the “value-constellation” of business in today’s world is embedded in and generated through dynamic “web-shaped patterns of relationships,” and that the task of leaders is to recognize these patterns and to position themselves within this “generative domain of relationships” to reshape the world. They indicate that the blind spot for most leaders is “in not seeing or understanding the full process of “social reality formation” (p.6) in terms of how experience is cognized, accessed and translated into knowledge and action at the tacit, behavioral, relational, and system levels. They argue for a new methodology – a “distributed leadership phenomenology” that will enable leaders to describe and access relevant experience as it emerges from the tacit and social levels for leadership and strategy development. Leaders are instructed to analyze the shared context in which they find themselves, learn how to recognize emerging relationships and patterns of behavior, and work collectively with others to co-generate ideas, solutions, and actions for maximizing business performance.

The findings of this study are supported by extensive research indicating that networks and their attendant product of social capital are strongly related to business performance. For example, it has been found that social capital facilitates the flow of information and knowledge, improves relationships, teamwork, and coordination of work, increases individual commitment and flexibility, creates normative integration and promotes shared culture, enhances innovation and organizational agility, increases efficiency and reduces transaction costs, and improves economic performance and the likelihood of organizational success (see Adler, & Kwan, 2002; Bolino, Turnley, & Bloodgood, 2002; Kostava, & Roth, 2003); Nhapiet, J., & Ghoshal, S. 1998). Additional studies on globalization (Castells, 1996) and multi-national corporations (Nohria and Ghoshal, 1998), as well as company-based networks (Charan, 1991; Cohen, & Prusak, 2001), also point to the network and social capital as essential in understanding and explaining leadership and business performance.

In this article, a contextual view of leadership and leadership development through the ‘lens of actor-network theory’ is presented. It is the contention here that the actor-network view of leadership provides a salient and more balanced explanation of how leadership actually works in today’s business world than reductionist, trait-based and competency theories.

Leadership and Actor-Network Theory

While at the Ecole des Mines in Paris, Michel Callon (1991) and Bruno Latour (1992) conducted a number of ethnographic studies that are generally credited with popularizing actor-network theory (ANT). They studied three case studies in the area of science policy in France: an electric car to be made publicly available, Minitel, a telephone to become integrated into a global computer system, and a proposed computer-driven public transportation system in Paris. The failure of each case to implement science policy was attributed to a top-down approach in which policy leaders failed to build adequate support for the change by taking into account the interests and needs of key stakeholders, and failed to resolve disputes with those who opposed the policies. Their conclusion was that a common conception of social reality could not be forged to support successful policy implementation without strategic alliances and support from an encompassing network of intermediaries.

Latour and Callon argue that successful change requires a common conception, an encompassing support network, and the resolution of disputes through compromises. These leadership activities are embodied in the following definition and description of actor-network theory: “Actor-network theory is a progressive constitution of a network in which both human and non-human actors assume identities according to prevailing strategies of interaction. Actors’ identities and qualities are defined during negotiations between representatives of human and non-human actants. The most important of these negotiations is “translation,” a multi-faceted interaction in which actors (1) construct common definitions and meanings, (2) define representatives, and (3) co-opt each other in the pursuit of individual and collective objectives. In the actor-network theory, both actors and actants (non-human entities, e.g., computers, software, data, reports, knowledge, cell phones, offices, etc.) share the scene in the reconstruction of the network of interactions leading to the stabilization of the system.(Bardini, 1997, footnote 4).”

From a leadership standpoint, actor-network theory suggests two important and seemingly conflicting perspectives. The first perspective is that all actors are also networks in and of themselves. They are not simply a person or body but also a body-network – a pattern of heterogeneous relations, or an effect produced by such relations. The meaning of actor-network is that an actor is always a network defined by the order of materials and the patterning of relationships. According to this perspective leadership, knowledge, power, and even organizations are social products or effects of a heterogeneous network or context that surrounds them. This context includes other people, financial resources, facilities, equipment, technology, space, location, and many other entities.

These entities are competing with other entities for dominance within the network. The patterns that emerge from the struggle define the network be it a leader, organization, or other phenomenon, and determines its capabilities and options. As Law (1992, p. 4) puts it, “The actor-network theory assumes that social structure in not a noun but a verb. Structure is not free standing, like scaffolding on a building-site, but a site of struggle, a relational effect that recursively generates and reproduces itself . . . It is the result of a struggle with like networks in which one pattern overcomes another through a process of “heterogeneous engineering” in which bits and pieces from the social, the technical, the conceptual and the textual are fitted together, and so converted (or ‘translated’) into a set of equally heterogeneous (scientific) projects.”

Some of the questions a leader may ask to devise strategies for influencing the network are: what ideas, innovations, objects, facilities, resources can be created or mobilized and juxtaposed within the network to achieve desired results? How can ideas and material objects within the network needed for patterning of social relations be communicated? How are decisions translated into actions within the network? What relationships need to be established, realigned, repaired? How does a leader, lead effectively within this network? The answers to these questions represent key strategies that a leader can use to influence networks (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1 – Strategies in Actor-Network Theory (Law, 1992)

Strategy 1: since some materials are more durable than others and so maintain their relational patterns longer, one strategy is to embody or inscribe a set of relations in durable materials, e.g., inscription of thoughts into books.

Strategy 2: durability is ordering through time, mobility is ordering through space. Through materials and processes of communication – writing, electronic communication methods of representation, we can find translations that create the possibility of transmitting relational effects.

Strategy 3: Translation is more effective if it anticipates the responses and reactions of the material to be translated. This is the functionalism of business. To find or create centers of translation to generate these effects or dissolve resistances. The capacity to foresee outcomes and appropriate relational circumstances that have important “calculational” consequences that increase network robustness.

Strategy 4: a series of discourses which ramify through and reproduce themselves in a range of network instances or locations, e.g., enterprise administration, vocation, vision, generate complex configurations of network durability, spatial mobility, systems of representation, and calculability – configurations that have the capability of generating center asymmetries and hierarchies characteristic of formal organizations. Media propaganda, artificial intelligence systems, enterprise computing systems, etc.

The tension between the leader as an effect of the network and the leader as shaper of the network plays out in a variety of ways. Principally, the network sets the parameters and provides the stuff, e.g., other actors, resources, power, etc. which the leader may use to shape and align the network to his conception of reality or vision.

An Example of Using Actor-Networks to Create Leadership Models

The Roy H Park Leadership Fellows Program in the Johnson School at Cornell University offers a good example of how actor networks worked in the creation of the Program, and how a leadership development program can foster actor network leadership competencies. The Park Program is a full tuition plus stipend fellowship offered to up to 30 students per class. It is funded by the Triad Foundation as a renewable grant in honor of the late Roy H Park Sr. a local entrepreneur. The purposes of the grant are to attract high caliber students and create a niche in leadership education for the Johnson School. Since its inception 1997, the Program has rapidly gained a reputation as a unique and powerful leadership development experience in management graduate education. The Park Program has increasingly attracted students from other top five schools, and the resulting leadership curriculum, that is now available to all students in the School, was recognized as the most robust leadership training experience in a top 20 school in a 2001 benchmarking study by Kellogg students.

The original grant leading to the creation of the Park Program and a leadership curriculum at the Johnson School was the result of an intricate confluence of mutual interests of actor networks, both external and internal to School. Three, key external network relationships helped shaped the context for the important role the Program was to play in the future of the School. First, the founding grant was based on the wishes of Roy H Park Sr., who had developed relationships with past deans, and whose son, Roy H. Park Jr., had attended the Johnson School. Second, the grant was closely followed by the School’s move into a new facility that was funded largely by a $20 million gift of Sam Johnson whose family had a long relationship with Cornell and the Johnson School. Finally, Jeffrey Parker, a graduate of the School, created the Parker Center, a state of the art for investment research center with $2 million gift. The combination of the new facility, the Parker Center, and the Park Leadership Fellows Program led to the School’s dramatic rise from 18 to 8 in the Business Week rankings in 1998, and helped greatly increase the attractiveness of both the School and the Park Program.

Similarly, the selection of the leadership theme for the Park Program was also the result of the evolving interests of a small but important network of actors internal to the system. This key group emerged in the late 80s and early 90s as a result of their participation in what is now known as Adirondack Experience, a 6 day Outward Bound type of leadership program initiated in 1987. A number of administrators and faculty participated in this program over the years and kindled an interest in creating more leadership development experiences for students. This group included the acting Dean at the time of the original grant award Thomas Dyckman, the Associate Dean John Elliott, chaired Professor, J. Edward Russo, and the Program Director, C. Clinton Sidle, who was later recruited to return to the School to head-up the program. The growing interest among the first three of these key players led to the School’s exploring opportunities and a potential partnership with the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). As a result of this percolating interest, when the Foundation approached the School with the possibility of the grant and asked the School to name a theme for the program, the timing was ripe for giving the Park Program a leadership theme.

Finally, actor networks also played a key role in the development and growth of the Program. An internal committee chaired by Professor Jay Russo and comprised of faculty, staff, and Park fellows developed the initial program. This committee prepared a plan that became the roadmap for the program during its first couple of years. Among those ideas were the creation of a leadership speaker series, service projects in the community to develop leadership skills, an external advisory board, and a center for leadership at the School. The speaker series and service projects were launched immediately. The external Park Advisory was launched shortly afterwards and included thought leaders and authors Ken Blanchard and Jim Belasco, Professor Bruce Avolio now at the University of Nebraska, and a number of prominent Johnson alumni business leaders. The Center for Leadership in Dynamic Organizations was inaugurated two years later in 2000 after efforts around leadership had gained momentum. Both the external Park Advisory Board and the Center have played key roles in shaping the program, forming key networks and extending them into the business world.

The growth of the Roy H Park Leadership Fellows Program is the result of a web of mutual interests that manifested in money, partnerships, curriculum changes, and physical and intellectual capital. No single player could claim responsibility or ownership. They were achieved through a network of individual leaders whose influence and skills coalesced around a simple and evolving theme of leadership.

Developing Actor Network Leaders

The Park Program and the leadership development experience in general at the School are also designed to develop the very competencies that foster actor network leaders. Vaclav Havel once said that, “education is about revealing the hidden connections between phenomena.” Similarly, an actor network leader is a person who has learned to see those connections and develop the networks of knowledge, information, space, and social capital necessary for managing and increasing organizational or system performance. In essence, actor network leaders have learned to see connections and develop a level of personal influence that help them serve as attractors – important nodes or connectors – in a vast array of potential networks in a system. This is analogous to the role of “strange attractors” in physics that magnetically pull a system into shape. The personal influence necessary to serve in this role depends a diverse set of competencies that include

• Knowledge for understanding the business and a grasp of the cross-functional issues for seeing the possible connections,
• Relationship skills for building trust, interpersonal influence, and social capital for collaborative efforts,
• Vision for seeing the possibilities, what is most important, and communicating direction and strategy,
• Action orientation for leading by example, and embodying and modeling the way for others, and finally
• Personal Mastery and self-knowledge for understanding personal motivations and values that drive personal development and the ability to learn from experience.

These are the set of leadership competencies that make up the leadership model discussed in the last section. This model guides the design of the curriculum and drives personal learning strategies of the Park Fellows and other students participating in the Leadership Focus (discussed above). Students are assessed and reassessed on these competencies to determine the success of their efforts to improve areas of identified need throughout their two years experience. These competencies were developed through a collaborative effort with the faculty of the Johnson School’s Center for Leadership and Dynamic Organizations and the College of Industrial and Labor Relations along with the corporate partners of the College’s Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies (CAHRS). The ILR faculty associated with CAHRS conducted a study of best practices and leadership competencies of the corporate partners that provided the foundation for the Johnson School’s leadership model summarized in Figure 1 below.